Amazed, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Hotel Shenanigans
Title Page
Copyright
Description
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Dragon Shenanigans
Title Page
Copyright
Description
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Undercover Shenanigans
Title Page
Copyright
Description
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter SIx
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Thank You
Amazed copyright © 2021 Pepper McGraw
Digital Edition
Hotel Shenanigans copyright © 2020 by Pepper McGraw
Dragon Shenanigans copyright © 2020 by Pepper McGraw
Undercover Shenanigans copyright © 2020 by Pepper McGraw
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover images from Dreamstime:
Dragon Silhouette © Elena Kozyreva
A Glass of Beer © Leonora Adamchuk
The illuminance of led lighting (wine glass) © Wahahaz
Hotel Sign Bulb and Neon © GorralitAramchockchaisakul
Edited by J.L. Troughton
PMG Publishing
Amazed Copyright © 2020 Pepper McGraw
Digital Edition
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover images from Dreamstime:
Hotel Sign Bulb and Neon © Gorralit Aramchockchaisakul
Cute Toon Fairy in Blue Flower Dress © Algol
Edited by J.L. Troughton
PMG Publishing
Once upon a time, he met a fairy.
The only trouble is he doesn’t know if she was real.
When Harry inherits his family’s hotel, he knows this is his chance to finally discover the truth. Though the hotel seems to have long lost its magic, Harry still hopes to prove to himself that his best friend from childhood was real and not just the figment of his imagination everyone always said she was.
Lily’s been waiting decades for Harry to return to the hotel where they once met. The only problem is when he finally arrives, he’s no longer able to see the magic of the hidden world. If Harry no longer believes, it’s up to Lily to somehow convince him. Of course, since he can’t see her, she’s going to need a bit of help from the locals.
With the Shenanigans crew involved, though, things are bound to get out of hand fast.
Prologue
“I CAN’T TAKE it anymore! The flashing lights, the slamming doors, your crazy son! I’m done. Do you hear me? I’m done!”
Harry crawled deeper into the closet and buried his face against his knees, trying to block out the sounds of his parents fighting.
“My son? He’s your son too! And this is our home. It’s my heritage! You can’t expect me to just walk away—”
“It’s this damn hotel or me! And if you think I’m leaving my son behind to go even crazier than he already has, you’re mad!”
“Aw, Maggie, come on. The boy’s not crazy. He’s just got an active imagination.”
“Active—his best friend is a fairy, for heaven’s sake!”
Harry wasn’t sure why Lily made his mom so angry. It wasn’t like she could help being a fairy.
“Hiding again?”
Harry jerked his head up and smiled. “Lily!”
She was sitting right beside him, arms wrapped around her legs, head turned toward him, cheek resting on her knees, her beautiful gray and white wings draping down her back. Harry knew they would be silky soft if he touched them, but somehow hard too. He didn’t know how it was possible to be both things at once, but somehow Lily’s wings were.
“You came back!” He hadn’t heard her come into the closet with him, but then he never did. Lily was so quiet, it was almost like she could walk through walls.
“Of course I came back. I always come back.” This was the same reply Lily gave him every time. Usually she said it with a huge smile. Today though, she didn’t smile at all and her bright blue eyes were full of tears.
Harry was going to say what he always said, which was that he wanted her to stay forever, but the words wouldn’t come. It took him several tries before he managed to ask, “What’s wrong? Why are you sad, Lily?”
“I think forever’s going to have to wait a while.”
Harry jerked. He hadn’t said anything about forever this time, but she’d answered anyway. “What do you mean?”
“You’re going to leave me soon, Harry.”
“What? No! You’re the one always going away. I’d never leave you, Lily. Never!” Harry was only six years old, but he’d known from the moment he met Lily that they were meant to be together. It was going to be Lily and Harry forever.
“I wish that were true, Harry, but your mom’s packing your bags right now.”
“What?” Harry stood up and listened. The fighting had finally stopped. Usually that was a good thing. So why did the silence scare him so much now?
Lily stood and grabbed his hand in hers. “Your mom’s taking you away. I don’t know if your dad’s going with you, but I know you’re leaving.”
Harry shook his head. “No. I can’t leave. You’re my best friend, Lily!”
“There you are!” The closet door opened with a jerk and Harry jumped. “Get out here right now, Harry! I’ve been looking all over for you.” His mom grabbed his arm and jerked him out of the closet.
“Wait! Lily!” Harry looked over his shoulder as his mom dragged him toward the door of the guest room he’d hidden inside.
The closet was empty.
But—
With all his strength, Harry flung himself to the floor, breaking his mother’s hold on his arm.
She cried out, but he scrambled away as fast as he could, his mother storming after him.
He flung himself back inside the closet, landing on the floor.
“You little brat!” His mother grabbed him again and jerked him to his feet.
As she dragged him out of the room and down the hall to the elevator, shouting and raging, Harry didn’t bother to fight.
Twenty minutes later, he was in the backseat of their car, staring at the hotel as it disappeared in the distance.
Somewhere in that hotel, his Lily was being left behind, but as Harry cupped the purple flower he’d managed to rescue from the floor of the closet, the flower his Lily had been wearing in her hair just moments before, he whispered both a plea and a promise.
“Don’t forget me, Lily. I’ll be back.”
Chapter 1
25 YEARS LATER
Harry Anderson sat behind the hotel check-in counter and stared at the small blue crystal Megan, one of the owners of a shop in town, had given him almost a month before. She’d claimed the crystal could help draw Lily back into his life. Well, she hadn’t said Lily exactly. After all, Megan didn’t know about Lily, but she’d said it would draw the person meant for him and that was Lily.
But it had been a month and nothing had happened.
He shouldn’t be surprised. After all, he’d been back at the hotel four years now, hoping to somehow prove his imaginary friend, Lily, was real.
He hadn’t wanted to believe his mother was right, but after years of therapy and being told fairies were make-believe, he’d entered adulthood as convinced that fairies didn’t exist as he’d been convinced as a child that they did.
He’d spent a decade in the business world, managing high-end hotels, Lily an almost-forgotten part of his past. Then his father had passed away, leaving the hotel to Harry in his will, and just like that, all his memories of Lily had come flooding back.
He’d come to Jamesville with the plan to sell the hotel, but the minute he’d walked the floors, he knew he couldn’t possibly let this last link to the one bright spot in his childhood go.
He’d spent six months wrapping up his life, something not as simple as it might seem. His mother had been furious and the confrontations endless.
For the first time in his life though, Harry had stood strong in the wake of her fury, his need to know the truth and his longing for Lily much stronger than any feelings of loyalty he had for his mother.
And so he’d moved two hundred miles to the west to this crumbling hotel, armed with the ridiculous idea that he’d either prove to himself Lily really existed or finally be able to let her go. Only now he was in limbo because he’d managed neither.
And so here he was.
Trapped.
Unable to move on.
Unable to let go.
Staring at the tiny blue crystal, Harry took out his wallet and carefully extracted all that was left of that flower he’d held onto for years as proof Lily was real.
It was only a petal now.
A petal that had been shredded into three separate pieces.
A petal he had painstakingly put back together as a child, then pressed between two strips of clear packing tape. Afterward, he’d carefully cut around the petal, so that it was mostly intact, mostly in its original shape and almost as beautiful as the day he’d rescued it from the closet floor.
His mother had been furious when she’d found the flower. She’d thrown it in the trash multiple times, but he’d always managed to rescue it.
He wasn’t sure why she hated that flower so much.
Maybe because she thought it was proof her son was crazy.
Or maybe because it was proof he wasn’t.
After all, even today, twenty-five years after the flower had been picked, worn and dropped by Lily, then rescued by him, and twenty-three years after it had been fed to the shredder by his mother in a furious rage, the petal that survived was as brilliantly, beautifully purple as it had been all those years before.
One last remnant of the innocence of childhood.
He carefully set the petal down so that it rested on the counter not too far from the crystal Megan had given him.
He stared at the two — the shiny blue crystal whose color reminded him of Lily’s eyes and the bright purple petal that was his last link to Lily — and imagined the two belonged together, much the way he’d imagined he and Lily belonged together back when he was six and believed in such things.
He sighed, then picked up the crystal and gently set it down so that it rested on the petal. “Well, go on then,” he told them. “Do your thing. Prove to me that I’m not crazy. Or that I am. Just do something.”
“Harry?”
He jumped and looked up. “Oh, hi, Phoenix. Haven’t seen you in a while.” He stood up and casually pushed the crystal and petal so they were hidden beneath the overhang of the counter. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, we had a little mishap out at Shenanigans.”
“What kind of mishap?”
“Actually it was a pretty big one. A pipe burst above the bar and well, it’s not exactly going to be an easy or quick fix. So um, I thought I’d check to see if maybe we could use your bar space until Shenanigans is fixed.” She spoke so quickly at the end if took Harry a few minutes to understand what she was asking.
“You want to use the bar? The one here? In the hotel?”
Phoenix nodded. “If we could. Please.”
Harry shook his head. “That bar hasn’t been open in decades, Phoenix. I don’t even know if it’s safe. Plus I don’t have my liquor license. Or food license. Or any kind of license.”
“That’s okay. We’ll take care of everything.”
Harry sighed. “I’m not sure, Phoenix. I mean–”
“And of course, you’ll get a percentage of the profits.”
“That’s not the point.” Still the money would be nice. His savings and investments wouldn’t exactly support him forever. “How big a percentage?”
“Well, I’ll have to check with Travis and Glory, but I promise it’ll be generous.”
Harry was pretty sure this would end up being the worst idea ever, but it wasn’t like his hotel was overrun with guests. “Do you even think anyone’ll come?”
“Of course they will!”
“All right, fine. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?” The second he spoke the words, Harry knew he’d made a huge mistake.
What had his dad always said to him?
Never dare the universe when you’re standing in the midst of magic.
Of course, even if this hotel had been magic at one time, Harry was pretty certain whatever magic it once had was long gone.
He was probably safe.
“That’s the spirit!” Phoenix exclaimed. “This is going to be so much fun! Also, before I forget, we’re going to need two rooms.”
“Oh. You’ll be staying here then?”
“Yep. Can’t exactly live above a construction zone. Don’t worry about a thing, okay?”
“Um. Sure.” Harry watched as Phoenix darted away, then bounded back.
“Thanks, Harry!” She jumped up, leaned over the counter and kissed him on the cheek. “See you later!” She raced out the door.
Chapter 2
“ARE YOU INSANE?” Travis roared.
Phoenix covered her ears and glared at her mate. She’d known he wouldn’t love the idea, but had no idea he’d freak out this badly. “It’s the perfect solution!”
“The perfect solution is to live in that rundown, flea–bitten hotel?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I never saw a single flea while I was staying there!”
“Oh, there’s a ringing endorsement,” Max muttered.
“Max.” Glory shook her head at him.
The four of them were standing outside Shenanigans, having just finished a walk-through with the foreman of the shifter crew who would begin work in the morning. Given the amount of damage that had occurred, Glory and Travis had decided they would take advantage of this opportunity to expand both the bar and the apartments above it.
Of course, when the shifter communities had discovered their favorite bar wouldn’t be available to them for several months, a riot had almost ensued.
Hence, Phoenix’s brilliant idea. However, she hadn’t even had a chance to mention that part of the plan because Travis had been so horrified at the thought of staying at the hotel.
“Harry’s a perfectly nice man who could use a little help, you know?” Phoenix said. “I have no idea how he stays in business when he never has any guests!”
“I wonder why,” Travis retorted.
“Don’t be a jerk. We can help out a neighbor and in return, he’s going to let us use the hotel bar while Shenanigans is being fixed.”
“What?” Travis roared, but he was drowned out by the cheering from the cougars and wolves who were lurking, pretending not to listen.
“Huh. That’s not a bad plan at all, Phoenix,” Glory said.
“I know, right?”
* * *
Travis couldn’t believe his ears. “Not you too, Glory!” He could understand the wolves and cougars, but bears were supposed to be more sensible than this. “Harry’s a human! How are we going to operate a shifter bar in a human establishment? Are you two insane?”
Glory grinned. “Don’t be ridiculous, Travis. That hotel’s no more a human establishment than Shenanigans is.”
Phoenix’s mouth dropped open. She whirled on Glory. “Really?”
Before Glory could answer, Megan, one of the local witches, piped up. “She’s right. That hotel is brimming full of magic. There’s something wrong with it though.”
Her sisters Lara and Jessica both nodded in agreement.
“It’s all contained somehow,” Jessica said.
“Well, of course, it’s contained,” Travis exclaimed. “Its owner is one hundred percent, boringly human.”
Megan laughed. “There’s nothing boring about Harry at all.”
“Hey!” Cole glared at his mate.
Megan rolled her eyes. “Of course, he’s nowhere near as fascinating as you are.”
Cole slung an arm around her shoulders. “And don’t you forget it, mate.” And then he swept her back and kissed her breathless.
Travis harrumphed. This town was getting out of control. At first there were just bears and wolves and cougars. Now there were witches and apparently magical hotels. Not to mention his sister, a highly sensible bear once upon a time, had decided to mate one of the crazy wolves.
